Father's memory of a moment that changed his life / Chaos, astonishing speed of Oakland fire comes back to those watching latest inferno

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 9, 2003

OAKHILLS FIRE/C/20OCT91/MN/FL - SIX ALARM FIRE IN THE OAKLAND HILLS. THE FLAMES FROM THE FIRESTORM BURNED DOWN NEIGHBORHOODS IN THE OAKLAND HILLS. PHOTO BY FRED LARSON

OAKHILLS FIRE/C/20OCT91/MN/FL - SIX ALARM FIRE IN THE OAKLAND HILLS. THE FLAMES FROM THE FIRESTORM BURNED DOWN NEIGHBORHOODS IN THE OAKLAND HILLS. PHOTO BY FRED LARSON

Photo: FRED LARSON

Father's memory of a moment that changed his life / Chaos, astonishing speed of Oakland fire comes back to those watching latest inferno

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When Tom Theimer watched the coverage of the fires in Southern California, he found himself focusing on the victims who died. Not so much their names, or who they were, but how it happened. How did they get trapped? Why couldn't they run away, or get around the fire or find a safe spot? Wasn't there something they could have done? How was it possible that they were caught by the remorseless flames?

In October 1991 Theimer was in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., watching the 49ers game on TV. During the broadcast, there was a mention of a fire in the Oakland hills. Thank God, Theimer thought, relieved. He'd been at home in those hills the day before, and a small fire had broken out. He'd seen the helicopters carrying big buckets of water to the blaze. Good thing they'd gotten it out. The chances of two fires in the same place were infinitesimal.

Down the street from Theimer's house, Kenny Katzoff, an attorney, was on his way to the 49ers game. He remembers that they were playing the Lions. He went down the winding streets to the flatland, where he was going to meet a friend to carpool. That's when he realized that the fire he'd been hearing about was near their neighborhood. Nothing to worry about, he thought, but on the spur of the moment he decided to head back up to the house for a check.

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When Katzoff got there, the electricity was out. That was annoying. He thought he'd better monitor the progress of the fire so he went down the hill and looked across the canyons at the smoke. He and his wife watched for an hour before they were convinced. All was well. The flames were two ridges away.

He went back up to the house. They were safely out of harm's way.

That's when an awful revelation hit him. The flames had come around behind them. They were right there. There wasn't time to do anything but run for it. One of their cars was in the shop and all they had was a little two- seat Miata. They tossed the spare tire out of the trunk and loaded the first things that came to mind. Later they would remember his brother's expensive artwork, his valuable stamp collection. But they weren't thinking about that. In their minds they were just packing for a day, until they could drive up the next morning and get the rest.

In Washington, the phone rang in Tom Theimer's hotel room. It was his brother in Denver. Theimer's wife and daughter, Gabriela, had been forced to flee the house, his brother said. Gabi jumped in her car and took off, and then his wife grabbed a slip of paper with the hotel and phone number on it and followed. But on the way to the car the paper had fluttered out of her hands. In the hot, howling wind it was gone instantly. Theimer's brother had gotten a phone listing of every hotel in Washington and had methodically called until he reached Tom.

"I just remember when I got that phone call," Theimer says, "I thought, 'From this moment on, everything in your life has changed.' "

They wouldn't let anyone return to the site for days. And even then, you had to ride with authorities. Theimer remembers it was the third day before he was able to make the trip. He had thoughts: Maybe a few things had been spared.

It amuses him now to remember that he had a crazy fantasy that his computer - - his business, his career -- might have fallen down under something and been saved.

They were stunned when they arrived. Kenny Katzoff says it looked like a war zone, but it sounds worse than that. It seemed impossible but they could not find their houses. Not just the structures. They could not identify the plot of land where they once stood.

"This driveway," Theimer says, "that we had turned into every day for all those years."

If he hadn't been a jogger, Theimer says, and remembered the little elevation rise in front of his house, he'd never have recognized the place. Everything had vaporized. The heat, up to 2,000 degrees, was so incredible that Theimer found a silver pool of metal on the driveway. He realized that was what was left of the aluminum engine of his motorcycle.

There were informal groups that got together later. Katzoff, who decided to rebuild on the same site and lives there today, thinks that was the saving grace of the disaster. Neighbors met, sometimes for the first time, and formed wonderful bonds that have lasted to this day. They'd sit in a group, a fellowship of survivors, and admit to feelings only they could understand. "You know what?" they'd say. "It was just stuff. That's all. We lost some things, and it hurt, but it was just stuff."

Theimer sat in groups and heard that the same thing.

"They were trying to be positive," he says. "They'd say it was just stuff and we need to get over that. And I knew for me that was not the case. Sometimes I would say something, and sometimes I would let it go."

There were two routes down from Theimer's house. One went left and straight down and the other, which was actually quicker, was to the right and up the hill a bit. Gabi, who left first, always took the quicker route.

You could count on Gabi. She was an extraordinarily level-headed teenager.

She did some baby-sitting for the Spitz's, who lived next door, and they liked her so much they took her with them on a short vacation to help watch the baby.

It was funny about Gabi. She always said she couldn't wait to be 18. That would be the day, she'd say, she was going to leave home. Nothing against her parents, nothing rebellious. She was just a self-assured, independent girl. Always had been. Her parents didn't worry about her leaving, she'd be fine, but they were going to miss her.

And then, as she turned 16 and 17, going to school at Miramonte in Moraga,

she began to have second thoughts. She began to think, her dad says, that "maybe home wasn't so bad after all."

What they think now is that Gabi ran into a wall of flame up the hill. She must have gotten her car turned around and headed the right direction, but by then the fire had closed in. Her mother had gotten through on the same impossibly narrow street, Charing Cross, but by the time Gabi got there it was jammed. There was an Oakland police officer there and several cars.

Theimer remembers it was at night when they got the call. They found Gabi's body. Someone had to go down to identify it. He couldn't do it. It still bothers him. Maybe he should have gone. And then he goes over it all again. What if he'd been home? How was she caught? Could he have done something? Could he have saved her? Now, he says, he thinks of her when he sees "another young person, or someone who has a daughter."

Gabriela died two days after her 18th birthday. Exactly one year after the fire, to the day, Tom and Susan Spitz learned that they were going to have a baby girl. They named her Emily Gabriela.